Question

There is a famous quote often attributed to Albert Einstein that says:

“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”

There is some dispute about whether Einstein ever said this, but it might reflect his sentiments as more accurately cited in the book Mathematical Problems in Elasticity (Remigio Russo 1996):

“At this time the anti-relativity clique in Germany […] published a book called 100 Authors Against Einstein. Einstein informed that press that if relativity was wrong they would only need one author.”

Each quote captures an important aspect of the Popperian hypothetico-deductive account of science: knowledge comes from experimental falsification of a hypothesis rather than from experimental confirmation of one.

QUESTION: Explain how an inductivist might respond to this claim regarding falsification and knowledge. Do you agree with this response? Explain and justify your answer. In doing so, consider to what extent inductivists and Popperians have mutually exclusive ideals of what makes science rational, or whether they are, in some way, complementary.

Answer 1

Einstein stated like this may due to the fact that he was a deductivist rather than inductivist. Induction is a process of drawing a generalisation from a limited number of observations. This is done so that observations are always large in numbers and all the observation cannot be done due to limitations. But scientists never use a generalised statement because they know that all the theorems are not true at all. They remain true until a contrdiction come into its path. Here what popperian hypothesis come into play. It a method to demarcate pseudo science from actual science. The validity of a thesis is based on its falsification. According to a deductive popperian scientist a theory is never true. They do constant observation until to make it wrong. For him a theory can be wrong but never can say 100 percent true. According to popper induction never draw certainity but deduction do. I'll give some examples to prove this and some of these you may heard before in your theory classes.
By doing observations in swans one may observe 500 swans and do this induction that all swans are white. But in the future if a black swan is spotted, then the theory go wrong. So a deductivist keep the theory in pending and do observstions continuously on the time being. This critical thinking will give room for it for developement of the theory. If you put 25 frogs in a freezer and all of them die then inductivist says frogs cannot survive in freezer. But one in future may survive and a deductivist deduce it it is wrong and that is definite and starts to make repairs in the existing hypotheses. The order of thinking in the inductive reasoning is like this
They do observations, then find patterns, then find a hypothesis and finally a theory. Indian astrology is something like this which is of course pseudoscience. But a deductivist go like this. From the theory he elucidate hypothesis. then do observations and finally a confirmation.
Newton's theory prevailed until Einstein's theory published which proved it wrong. But some adjustment done and made confirmations that it is almost true at non relativistic speed.